Andrea James and Calpernia Adams are two of the most influential women in our community.  Their positive effect on many of us is profound.  Through sites like tsroadmap, deep stealth productions and their everyday lives in the public they’ve given us good role models.  Role models of being unashamedly who we are without necessarily broadcasting it far and wide – just naturally living our lives as who we are as we wish.

So their latest work is thought provoking and likely to be fun, it’s a movie entitled, “Transproofed”.  From the movies editorial notes on Amazon:

Ava (Calpernia Addams) is a transsexual woman who has recently completed her transition. Her friend and mentor Joyce (Andrea James) has long advised her to get her apartment “transproofed,” a slang term for hiding all the evidence that she’s trans.

In Ava’s case, that’s a tall order: Ava came up through the club scene as a showgirl, and both Ava and her apartment are vibrant, sexy, and full of clues.

Ava calls Joyce for a last-minute transproofing because her hot new boyfriend Mike (Joel Lambert) is coming over for dinner that night. Joyce races over to help Ava give the place an ‘Extreme Ho Makeover’ more in Joyce’s aesthetic: plain and non-descript. Joyce reminds Ava that passing as female means blending in and not drawing attention to yourself. Both Ava and her apartment are garish and flashy, and the two set to work making it look like a drab straight girl’s apartment.

Set to the pulsing club single “Next,” they go from room to room, leaving no stone unturned: closets, medicine cabinets, bookshelves, and even the fridge. As Ava watches more and more of who she is being hidden from view, she starts to have second thoughts about how much she is willing to sacrifice to live “stealth,” where no one knows she is trans.

Will Ava be able to walk away from everything that made her who she is and start fresh? Or will she risk losing another guy she really likes by telling him she’s trans?

This movie sounds completely fun and though provoking.  You can pick up your own copy at the Transproofed site or at Amazon.

This might be one of the single best sermons on repentance I’ve ever read or heard.  Delivered by Pastor Candace Chellew-Hodge, a writer and pastor, she explains repentance and it’s relevance in life.   Candace, from her bio, is “a recovering Southern Baptist and founder/editor of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for GLBT Christians. Her first book, Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, published by Jossey-Bass is now available at http://www.bulletproofbook.com.”

What almost every critic of LGBTIQA Christians misses is this:  Christ doesn’t care who you are;  He cares what’s in  our hearts and he cares how we live.  Since coming out I’ve met alot of people in our community whom I, as a former lay preacher, would have thought twice about.  But it’s nice to know that God was patient, even with me, as I learned our community isn’t that different from any other community.   And as I learned I was in no ways perfect (and still am not) I did learn about repentance in the process.  Pastor Candace’s sermon sums it up best.

So what about our sermon already?  Here’s an exerpt, I hope you get a fresh cup of coffee, as I did, and enjoy it completely:

Just this past week we inaugurated a new president. Many liberals – and even many conservatives – expect a lot from this man. Some even expect him to work miracles and move this nation very quickly in the direction they’d like to see it move. The story of Nineveh is a reminder that the best way to change this nation – the best way to lead our modern day Nineveh to true repentance – is by changing ourselves.

In this story God shows us that if we want change – we have to initiate it. By the time the king gets around to sending out a proclamation – it will be too late. We cannot wait for the king – or the president – to tell us what kind of changes need to take place in this world. We already know. We’ve already heard God speaking. Love has already come to town and we don’t need the president to tell us to jump that train or catch that plane. Real change – change that improves the lives of everyone from the banker to the beggar – doesn’t come from the top down. If the past eight years has taught us nothing, it should have taught us that those at the top are most concerned with those at the top. For real change to come to the least of these – the least of these must be the agents for that change.

If you want the hungry fed, feed them. If you want the homeless housed, house them. If you want equal rights, fight for them. If you want the prisoner visited, go visit them. If you want the naked clothed, clothe them. Don’t wait for a presidential decree or for Congress to pass a law. When love comes to town, the least of these understand their task – there is no “us” and “them” – it’s some of us for all of us.

Jonah’s message to Nineveh is just as urgent for us today. “Your time’s almost up. Get moving.”

There’s alot more in her sermon and I hope you are blessed, just as I was    You may reach her Sermon, “When Love Comes to Town” at Whosoever magazine here.

(photo courtesy of  Grey Blue Skies Photos)

Mona Rae Mason is one of those woman you just want to get to know. When you see her picture her smile is inviting, her demeanor relaxed with a hint of high energy coiled up inside her. And she’s been the field coordinator for the National Development and Research Institutes’ The Transgender Project:

Over the years, psychologists and medical professionals have conducted numerous small-scale and highly focused studies of various segments of the Transgender Community, yet precious little is known about how we actually live our lives; who we are; what we do and why; where we come from; and where we are headed.

The Transgender Project is designed to describe the economic, social and personal, family and workplace experiences of male to female trans-persons, how these experiences change over the course of our lives, and the impact of these experiences on our mental and physical health.

(We perked up a post on The Transgender Project back in February 2006 before results were revealed)

While The Transgender Project is tightly focused on NY, the results are interesting in that, at some level, they certainly apply to the transgender community at large. Mona shared some of the results of The Transgender Project study with attendees of the Central New York Health Systems Agency’s, “LGBT Stories: Reflections and Voices from Within”. The program, from their site, is “designed to promote information-sharing among the LGBT community and service providers using a format of storytelling & open discussion”.

One point Ms. Mason shared was about how the lack of acceptance of trans-people, when they come out, can be devastating. But while we might think of this as emotional or physically abuse, it can be far worse: losing a place to live when you a young teen trans-woman and you end up on the street. Mona shared the following,

These young transgender women, expelled from the home or forced to leave, end up on the street, homeless and hungry. Cold and hunger drive people to do things they would otherwise never do. Sex work soon becomes the only means by which they can survive.

It comes as no news to anyone here in this room, that the greater the number of different sex partners one has, the greater one’s chance of contracting HIV or an STI become. But what may surprise you is that this condition of family initiated homelessness is primarily a cultural phenomenon predominate in the African American and Latina segments of the transgender community. This homeless situation, in conjunction with the inability to find employment and shelter, and relying on sex work for survival are some of the direct correlates to our findings that show us that 48.1% of African American and 49.6% of Latina transgender women in our study tested positive for HIV at baseline.

That fact is astonishing. It parallels some of the thoughts that Walter Bockting, WPATH President, shared in a recent interview in “The Body” and that we blogged about at Beck’s Cafe here. It’s about survival, safety and acceptance. Is it any surprise those are the three bottom parts of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Mona had a few other thoughts to share as well. Depression, bi-polar disorder, personality disorders and other psychologically visible “abnormalities” can often be symptoms of not dealing with some inner real source of conflict and being transgender is one of those conflicts. The Transgender Project found that:

The rate of lifetime major depression in this study of male to female transgender persons was 54.3%. That is almost three times higher than the corresponding estimate for the general population….Suicide ideation for this same group was at 53.3%, again three times higher than the general population.

And she offers a challenges to health care providers and educators (and by proxy to each of us) who deal with glbt youth “but what of our gay and transgender kids who have left or quit school? Are we asking them, or even pushing them, to get that GED so they might be able to get a job, or are we just handing them condoms and telling them to be safe? That is simply not enough.”

Ms. Mason’s keynote is well worth a full read; so take your tall glass of ice coffee and please, have a read, you’ll be challenged to think and, possibly, to action. Mona’s keynote from the “LGBT Stories: Reflections and Voices from Within” conference is at her blog, “Mona Mason-Thoughts On Transgender” here.

Okay, its 2008, we are in a bad recession, jobs are tight…if men are having a hard time keeping jobs how can women in such a world??

My lead in is meant to be provocative as the story in the Wall Street Journal is almost archaic and the comments to the story seem spot on.  So let’s have at it; coffee still warm for this afternoon’s ready? Good!

The article entitled, “Ways Women Can Hold Their Own in a Male World” seems like reasonable advice on the surface.  The author lists seven helpful tactics a woman should consider to hold her own in the job world, they are:

• Make sure the firm you work for actually values women (sadly some firms really are misogynistic; I currently work for one)
• Identify Alpha and Beta males (presumably the Alpha males are always pounding the desk so it’s easier to figure them out)
• Find a Mentor (sounds like good advice for any employee)
• Speak Assertively (elminate “I’m Sorry” is one nugget, others on how to speak are also listed)
• Socialize with the boys (be ready to do alot of whisky shots presumably but don’t skip shaving your legs)
• Don’t assume stereotypical roles (guess I won’t bring in my homemade cookies!)

The article is interseting and has some nuggets but I would save some coffee for the juicy comments and they are JUICY!   Among the caustic retorts and truly sound advice from women commenters?

• “I can’t believe this article had to be written in 2008.”
• “Dominating the position through a colorful use of vocabulary is the best way to get ahead.”
• “Good grief….. how about just do a good job and make a difference. Works every time.”

Well worth the entertainment value and yes, some nuggets to use too, so save some coffee and go have a read.  You may reach this article at the WSJ at this link here.

I found the headlines to this article pretty provocative, “Women with high testosterone take more money risks” as seen in USA Today on August 24, 2009.    What struck me was how testosterone seemed to be the key indicator in risk taking.  The quote from one of the researchers is interesting:

Women with more testosterone tend to behave more like men when taking financial risks, according to a new study.

“Women with higher levels of testosterone turn out to be less risk averse, more willing to take risks,” Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago said in a telephone interview.

What’s really interesting is that among men and women with relatively low levels of testosterone there was virtually no difference in risk taking.    Another interesting tidbit?   If you are married, your testosterone decreases to the non-risk taking level (maybe that is the real reason for those marriages without sex!)

It’s a fun article with eye opening results that will make you think what really does drive us?  You can read the piece at USA Today’s site at this link here.